Always there... *

Now we might not be in the Premiership any more and we haven't got the Spinnaker Tower. Vosper Thorneycroft has gone, leaving Portsmouth doing ships better than us too. The Titanic and Craig David both sunk. But Southampton still Shows good Boat.

Although you have to approach it all very subversively and with a good dollop of cynicism it's still a good day out.

Small bits of town - old car parks, bits of dockside, Mayflower Park - seem to be able to host a huge show, including 240 tons of borrowed Weymouth Sand, and you only realise exactly where you are when you get high enough up to see...



You can buy virtually anything nautical including...

...boats:



(Look carefully... the price you pay is in the small font. The big price is the Boat Show discount...)

...really big boats with plasma tv screens, several floors and staff:



(This one is soooo expensive and posh that they make you put bags over your shoes just to be allowed on the carpet...)



...astroturf flipflops:



...and a Teletubbies hat:



(This is Tracy incorrectly modelling some manner of onboard storage receptacle. Available from Solent Plastics...)

There were many pirates. These were better than some and did the voices and everything.



(Although they didn't know they had missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day on 19 September. Shiver me timbers, etc...)

And one more shot of the quite spectacular £2.9 million Sunseeker Predator 82. We're there somewhere if you zoom in. And we're flickred too.



*Avril: “If I go ahead with the Barracuda, Charles, you’ll refuse to support me..?”
Charles: “If you go ahead, Avril, I’ll fire you...."
Ken: "You'll get Relton Marine over my dead body..."
Jack: "I'm building Barracuda and bringing the Mermaid Yard into to 20th century..."
Jan: "I have new stock of the orange jump suit with the shoulder pads...."
Leo:"Clip clop clip clop clip clop..."
Clod: "Qu'est-ce que c'est dans la distance??? Oh Merde!!!!!"
Simon May Orchestra: "Daaaaa-da dahh, daa-daa-daaa, daaaaa-da-dahh..."

Fearsome creatures...

I'm sure I read something about this in the Guardian, but apparently it's something to do with a very warm summer and then some rain and then some more hot weather. Whatever the reason, I thought it was time to get my own back on the pseudo-Australians and their tales of (possibly deadly) fauna.

So I'm letting you know that my house has been invaded thus.

(Don't click that link if you are of a nervous disposition. Oh, too late...)

I've successfully tamed and cleared three in about the past week, but comfort myself with those old wives' tales about them only coming into clean houses. Although not especially phobic, indeed quite at ease, I still prefer not to comfort myself with the urban myths about them crawling into your open mouth as you sleep...

Where's Steve Irwin when you need him, eh?

So much hot air...

Spurred on by others' green credentials and guilt about how much CO₂ my flying to New Zealand (and back) dumped into the atmosphere, I had a go on the Carbon Calculator website. If you put in details of where you've been and how you got there, it will tell you how much pollution you caused. I think even by walking to the kitchen you can destroy a sizeable section of the ozone layer. I'm staying on the sofa.

The upshot is that flying half way round the world and then coming back covers 38 572km and produces 4.2 tonnes (metric with an "...nes" on the end) of carbon dioxide...



...but it's not the end of the world (either literally or metaphorically) because I can buy trees to the value of £31.08, almost a forest, and everything will be OK and I will sleep at night. (If I'd only been to New York I would've got away with a measly £8.88 worth of trees. Which is a small tree in Durham somewhere.)

And I was actually going to do it!

But it seems trees are out of stock at the moment...



You see, this is what you get when you try to be holier-than-thou. If there are no trees left to buy, then there's probably something more wrong with the world than my £31.08 will put right...

Off their trolley's...

Flagrant abuse of the apostrophe!
Flickrd by sebFlyte.

I have now blogged twice about signs with bad grammar and no-excuse spelling but, worryingly, (or perhaps fortunately?) it seems I'm not the only one.

There's a whole "badgrammar" photostream on flickr where other like-minded people can gather and celebrate their pedantry.

So I'll put any future photo's their and shut up going on about it here.

Are Generious Offer...

I know this is my second post on this theme recently and I could be accused of being obsessive, but I thought you should know that Next in Calcot near Reading has the following vacancy for someone to "relenish" stock...



Make sure you speak to Ben. If you write to him, there could be all sorts of problems...

Talk Talk to me while you can...

Have finally dumped BT after paying them £11.99 a month + Caller Display + Call Diversion + Calls (= a lot) for actually not making any calls and then paying Virgin another £17.99 a month for broadband on top of that.

It is something I will undoubtedly regret. Although TalkTalk has a very trendy personalised Welcome Pack...



...and everything is written in very calm and reassuring Plain English, it has an unenviable Customer Service record: "Press 1; your call is important to us; we expect to answer your call at 3.37am" etc.

My switch date is 8 September. Say goodbye now. It's unlikely that you will see or hear from me again after then...